There really is a wall between Morning Joe and the rest of MSNBC. Chris Hayes can do entire segments on the re-emergence of the White Supremacist movement brought on by the Donald Trump candidacy. Lawrence O'Donnell has been calling Donald Trump a frontman for racism since at least 2011. The MSNBC website can publish article after article about Trump's love of race-baiting and the fear that instills.
But this morning Rob Reiner, who is clearly a consumer of all of the above media, sits on the Morning Joe set and repeats those facts, and you'd think he had pooped on the desk.
Let's start with the overwhelming irony that Willie Geist (sitting next to Mark Halperin, really) asks Rob Reiner what the appeal of Donald Trump is, with the understanding that not everyone watches Morning Joe and lets the MJ Media wisdom dictate how they should vote.
How do you explain the millions and millions of people who do not watch this show who actually like what they hear from Donald Trump, and aren't taking messages and orders from those of us in the media, but they listen to what he says for themselves, and vote for him?
Oh Willie aren't you precious. Because letting Donald Trump phone in his interview once a week for a fawning lap dance from Joe and Mika would never influence the Wall Street viewership of this show! Nosiree!
Rob Reiner plays good guest and bows to the "influence" of Morning Joe in the news world.
Then he drops what, for Morning Joe, is a BOMB.
"Well, there are a lot of people who are racist!"
Joe Scarborough can't BUHieve what just came out of Rob Reiner's mouth!
"You did not just say that!"
Mika actually puts her hands to her cheeks! Mercy!
Reiner has to temper it. Of course not EVERYONE is racist. Of course he's not necessarily saying Donald Trump is racist.
Mika tries to push a both siderist meme but Reiner won't hear of it. You, Joe Scarborough, would not speak in front of an audience which clearly had a number of Klansmen and skinheads in it. Bernie Sanders rallies do not have people with Swastika tattoos on them in the audience. But Donald Trump DOES. And he has let that submerged racism come out from the shadows.
If Joe Scarborough and his frightened toy poodle regulars weren't walled off from the rest of MSNBC, they wouldn't pretend to be shocked! -- Shocked! -- by the statement of truth that Rob Reiner just repeated from other parts of the MSNBC schedule. That Morning Joe is an island run by a Republican bully with the blessings of the suits upstairs, is a surprise to no one but, apparently, Rob Reiner.
